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Microsoft .NET Framework vs NGINX Plus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft .NET Framework
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NGINX Plus
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Microsoft .NET Framework is 6.0%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 10.8%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

Pavan Kodur - PeerSpot reviewer
Intuitive, easier to develop, maintain, and migrate from the old framework to newer versions
There are a few areas where they could compete better with products like React or Angular – the popular SPA (Single Page Application) frameworks. Microsoft has its own product called Blazor, but I don't think it's quite as powerful yet as React or Angular. I think that's an area for improvement. For example, HR asked me to build something that worked offline and online. Microsoft products don't really support that well, as I'd have to rely on browser databases. React and Angular are better for that. If I need something faster, I'd definitely use React. So, I see Microsoft lagging a bit in that area.
Ritesh-Bakhru - PeerSpot reviewer
Quick installation and very easy to manage while doing orchestration or automation
NGINX cannot be a replacement for your traditional load balancer with what we use in the network today. However, with applications going toward microservices, NGINX is definitely a way forward. F5 has many traditional load balancing features, so they still need to bring some of those features to NGINX. NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5. I think F5 is trying to implement those features in NGINX so they can improve the balancing on NGINX, but I think that will take some time. With the traditional F5 set up, the same OS can do load balancing, firewalls, and even policy enforcement. If we are able to bring some of those capabilities to NGINX, I think it would become a versatile solution and usage would definitely increase.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Proven solution with valuable customization."
"It is a stable solution."
"It's easy to create and integrate things."
"For us, it is better to remain under the umbrella of Microsoft."
"The solution is easy to use if the user is a developer or some technical person."
"The new .NET Core has those middlewares, which are awesome from a security standpoint. With the old Framework or the newer Framework, middleware is basically an event pipeline. You configure and register it, and it handles things centrally. A simple example is logging. With the old Framework, you needed to try/catch blocks everywhere. Here, you configure the logging handler once, and it captures exceptions across the application. I really like the middleware pattern."
"As we are scaling quite nicely on Azure."
"The addition of generics to handle common functionality across types, and the more recent upgrade of the dataset to the Entity Framework, has cut development time drastically, while increasing quality and confidence between builds."
"The product is resilient."
"I need to highlight that the number one thing about NGINX is that it is free."
"NGINX works much better than HAProxy in our current hardware and architecture for HTTP/HTTPS load balancing. ​​"
"With NGINX, I appreciate its ability to route traffic geographically."
"I think installation only took a couple of minutes — no more than 10 minutes."
"Nginx is simple to configure, very stable in a highly utilized environment and very modular, allowing DevOps to create it's own modules for interactive use with Nginx."
"The product is lightweight and fast."
"Its versatility and capabilities make it invaluable for implementing patches and fixes when necessary."
 

Cons

"Lacking in auto-scaling."
"The solution needs to update its security periodically because there are many security concerns."
".NET Is still heavy or dependant on other Microsoft libraries and frameworks."
"There is room for Microsoft .NET Framework to improve cloud platform capabilities."
"I would like to see more pre-built features in the MVC framework because as it is now, it's very open and you have to develop your own controls in order to use it."
"Needs stronger security with respect to cloud issues."
"Like in C#, Microsoft .NET Framework should provide code reusability options for all kinds of development processes."
"If Microsoft would provide a monthly subscription at a cost that a developer can afford then it would be really helpful."
"I would like the configuration process to be more simplified."
"Only improvement needed that I would point to is scalability. With it, I mean clusterized organisation on a low level. At the moment, the best alternative is RHEL HA."
"The KPI should be more focused on load balancing and the latency in application calling from the end system."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."
"NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5."
"Make modules easier to enable or disable. The beauty and ugly side of the NGINX modules is you have to know how to compile the module. For beginners or non-very technical aspirant(s) going for NGINX, they have to learn how to compile the modules.​"
"I would like it to have a more user-friendly graphical interface."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free but you need to pay for a license for the hosting service."
"The product’s pricing is a bit high."
"Do your homework. Consider the partnership program."
"The Microsoft .NET Framework is free of charge, without licensing cost."
"There is a Community Edition that can be used free of charge, but the licensing cost for the Enterprise version is quite high."
"Microsoft .NET Framework is free of cost."
"Microsoft .NET Framework is a free, open-source solution."
"The support is an extra cost when purchasing the license. The price of the solution is overall reasonable and paid annually or every three years. Additionally, they have a monthly license. The cost is approximately $1,000 per user."
"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."
"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."
"The cost is reasonable."
"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."
"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."
"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."
"​NGINX Plus is worth it, if you need it. If you do not need the features or support, the free and open source package is more than capable. ​"
"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft .NET Framework?
Microsoft .NET Framework continually innovates, particularly in Visual Studio, which focuses on improving languages, debugging, and .NET functionality.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft .NET Framework?
The company is not paying anything for the license. I am not familiar with this area. For us, it's free.
What needs improvement with Microsoft .NET Framework?
There may be some topics regarding connectivity and management of certificates that require attention. We are currently facing some issues.
Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?
IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...
What do you like most about NGINX Plus?
It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?
My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred any costs.
 

Also Known As

MS .NET Framework
NGINX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Curtin University, Rockwell Automation, Aruba Networks, Insurity Inc., City of Barcelona, Pennsylvania DCNR, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, A1 Telekom Austria AG, Eastman Chemical Company
Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft .NET Framework vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.